


Non Mihi Solum

by TwilightKnight17



Series: How to Kill a God [4]
Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Destruction, Gen, Goro is a one-man force of imperfection, P5R Spoilers, Painting, Palace Deadline Ending, Vandalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27392791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightKnight17/pseuds/TwilightKnight17
Summary: The ends justify the means, especially when the means will be undone by dawn.For the first time, Goro has something truly good to fight for.
Series: How to Kill a God [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967740
Comments: 9
Kudos: 75





	Non Mihi Solum

Goro’s Black Mask outfit, despite the moniker assigned to him by the Phantom Thieves, had never been entirely black. There had been a lot of navy and very dark grey involved. Joker had honestly worn more black than he did. But now, Goro was suiting up for his latest nighttime excursion. Solid black shirt, pants, shoes. A black knit cap pulled over his hair. A black mask from a costume store over his eyes. And a black backpack carrying his supplies.

It felt good to pick up an old hobby. Spray paint art didn’t really suit the image of the Detective Prince, but before all of that, he’d gotten good at the crisp lines that made up a striking mural. He still had his stencil paper and paint in a box in the back of his closet; the paint had expired, but it was easy enough to replace.

This was the latest in a series of ‘crimes’ he’d been committing across Tokyo. By day, he committed minor infractions. He blocked the sink drains in a public restroom and left all the taps on until it flooded. He was rude to cashiers and pedestrians. One day, he’d bought a jar of a thousand marbles and dumped it out on the nice, smooth floors of the underground mall in Shibuya. That had been a fun afternoon.

By night, though, he caused more serious damage. Never enough to hurt anyone physically. Not like before. He knew Akira wouldn’t approve. But enough damage to clarify that the world wasn’t perfect. He smashed store windows, destroyed potted plants, knocked over signs. He pushed dumpsters into the street and left them blocking the roads. He wrote threatening letters and left them in mailboxes at random. And he painted murals, huge and impossible to ignore.

It might have felt good to punch holes in the happy world around him, but it wasn’t just for his own satisfaction. Maruki couldn’t read him, the same way that he couldn’t read Akira, so it was impossible to fix the damage before someone _else_ noticed it and it entered their cognition. So every broken window, every menacing note, every bit of it was a blow to a ‘perfect’ reality, and every moment spent fixing it was a moment that Maruki wasn’t expanding his influence.

Tonight, he was working on a side street, with the blank side of an office building as his canvas. He pulled out red, black, green, and white, and a few of his more well-used stencils. The background came first, a sickly swirl of black and green, fading into black with hints of red. Over top of that, white stenciled letters to create an outline, filled in with red to spell out, “Do you remember who stopped Medjed?”

He was finishing up the layered colors for the Phantom Thieves’ logo when a voice from behind him said, “Magnificent!”

Goro whipped around, almost spraying a line of paint across the logo, and blinked. Yusuke was standing near the corner, looking over his mural with awe. “E-Excuse me?” he asked, pitching his voice low. He had no idea if Yusuke recognized him in this getup. He wasn’t sure he wanted him to.

“The bold use of complementary colors, the sharp contrast of black and white… You truly have an eye for this sort of work!” Yusuke said enthusiastically. “I had no idea you were an artist, Akechi!”

Well, that answered that. “I don’t show off my work publicly very often,” Goro replied. “For obvious reasons, I’m sure.”

“It’s so striking, though!” Yusuke came closer, examining the lines, and Goro peeled off the last bits of stencil paper and looked it over as well.

“It’s adequate, for now. I’m a bit out of practice.” Letters were child’s play. Real art took much longer. But he didn’t have the luxury of that kind of time.

“I’d love to see a piece of yours once you’ve returned to the peak of your skills,” Yusuke said, and Goro had to stop himself from giving in to the artist’s enthusiasm. Yusuke was still under the influence of the false reality. This attention most likely wasn’t genuine.

He started packing up his paint cans. “What brings you out here, Kitagawa? It’s late.”

Yusuke held up his phone. “We’re near the school dorms. I often take walks when I can’t sleep, looking for interesting things to photograph. One can never have too much inspiration.” He glanced back at the mural. “If I may ask… What was your inspiration for this piece? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of Medjed.”

Goro swallowed his nausea and smiled. “They’re an international online hacker organization. They threatened a ‘cleanse’ of Japan about a year ago. Don’t you recall?”

“It does sound vaguely familiar. I need to do better at keeping up with current events,” Yusuke hummed.

Goro decided to take a chance. He needed to know the extent of this brainwashing. “Kitagawa, this might be a strange question, but do you remember how we met?”

To his surprise, Yusuke beamed. “Of course I do! I was out with the others, and you stopped to speak with Akira. I remember that you didn’t have time to accompany us out very often, but you and I attended Shujin’s school festival with the others, and we spent time together in November before you withdrew from social events to focus on your entrance exams.”

Goro chuckled, the practiced, polite, Detective Prince’s laugh. “Right. Of course, I had no idea at the time how the winter was going to go. I think my choice to take a gap year was the right one, in the end.”

What a joke, calling it a choice. He wanted to bite his tongue. But he hadn’t allowed Maruki to craft him a perfect life, so he had to make his excuses for why he wasn’t really living the way the rest of them were. And his wish…

Well, his wish would have overlapped with another’s, so… it was all the same in the end.

“Well, if you ever consider taking your art in a more professional direction, I can speak to my mentors about finding you a patron!” Yusuke said happily. “I would be happy to help a fellow artist.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Goro slung his bag over his shoulder. “For now, I should be getting home. Goodnight, Kitagawa.”

“Goodnight, Akechi. Have a safe trip.”

Safe was relative. Nothing bad was going to happen to him in this world. There were no muggers lurking in dark alleys, or traffickers ready to snatch people off the street. The only crimes were the ones he committed. 

After double-checking the address in a small notebook, Goro took his bike back towards Kanda. He had one more stop before he went home for the evening. A small store near Aoyama-Itchome that sold specialty snacks, frequented by a certain therapist on his way to his former job. When he pulled into the alley across the street, Goro scoped out the store, checking on the buildings around it and keeping watch for any movement in the darkened windows. He’d spent several nights canvassing the shopping street, making sure that no one hung around after-hours. He’d also noticed that the buildings were brick, which would hopefully limit the damage to the ones surrounding his target.

Akira’s work desk had been a treasure trove of materials. Everything was exactly where it had been left, organized into a collection of boxes and bottles. When Goro went through the desk to see if there was any indication of what had been done to Akira, he found three small notebooks. One was empty; it was the one he now carried for making notes about Maruki’s reality. The second, when Goro flipped it open, turned out to be some sort of diary. He’d read a few pages, then put it back where he found it, feeling like he was violating Akira’s privacy. And the third notebook contained notes about the tools that the thieves used. References to instructions given by Morgana, details crossed out and amended with alternatives, sketchy diagrams of strange gizmos and odd objects. Most of it was useless to Goro, but he’d made himself a tidy collection of lockpicks, and he’d tinkered with some of the more… volatile tools.

Which led to this moment, where he was reaching into his backpack and pulling out a screwdriver, a small mallet, and a glass bottle filled with lighter fluid and plant balm. Molotov cocktails had been in Akira’s notebook, and while they worked well enough in the metaverse, they were just as destructive in reality. Goro checked the street to make sure no one was coming, and then headed for the store. The screwdriver and mallet were enough to shatter the window on the front door, and then he lit the bottle, tossed it inside, and ran back to the alley.

He stayed just long enough to make sure the flames were taking hold, licking over the inside of the building with indiscriminate hunger. To hell with the quaint little store. It would be fixed, certainly, but not right away. Maruki was still human, he still had to sleep. And this would burn until it entered enough people’s cognition to alert him that something was wrong.

Goro imagined setting Maruki on fire and smiled.

On his way home, he broke a few more windows. Smashed a few more potted plants. As many little things as he could. Loki hummed a pleased note in the back of his mind, encouraged by the small acts of chaos, and Robin… Well. Robin understood crime for the sake of the greater good very well.

_The Trickster would be proud,_ Loki murmured, more fondly than Goro had thought he was capable of.

_We’re getting closer. I can feel it,_ Robin encouraged.

Goro thought of flames consuming a small shop. Of people who were his friends for the wrong reasons. Of a gun pressed to a man’s forehead.

“I hope so.”

**Author's Note:**

> Look. LOOK. PQ2 is canon, okay? Goro's spray-paint skills are canon. Don't @ me. XD


End file.
